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How to Use
Learn more about the features, content, and functionality within the Bloomsbury Fashion Central subscription databases.
Your Homepage
The homepage features a search bar on the left-hand side, and information about your subscription on the right-hand side. The ‘My Databases’ box on the right contains the databases included in your subscription, with links to pages containing details of the content in that database.
You can see information about your subscription, including the option to log out*, under the institution icon in the navigation.
* This option will only be available to users who have accessed their subscription via log-in credentials, library card, or Shibboleth.
The Databases
Information about the contents of each database can be found on the ‘About Bloomsbury Fashion Central’ page, which is located under ‘About’ in the navigation. Downloadable title lists are available for each database.
Don’t have access to one of our databases? Please use the form on the Contact Us page.
Search
The search box is located on the left-hand side of the homepage and at the top of each page within the site. The search bar will search the databases under your institution’s subscription. To find out which databases your institution subscribes to, navigate to the homepage where they will be listed in the “My Databases” box on the right-hand side.
To search, type your term or phrase into the search box. After you have run a search you will be directed to a search results page. The default number of search results is 25 items – you can change this to 50 or 100. The number of results will display at the top of the page.
If your subscription contains images these will display at the top of the page and text and video results will appear underneath. Click “View the image results” to open a results page that contains only image results.
Text search results indicate the type of content in a grey box on the right-hand side, e.g. ‘Book chapter’, ‘Encyclopedia entry’. You can see which database each result belongs to under ‘Source’ in the bibliographic details.
Use the filters on the left-hand side of the search results to refine your search. Selecting a filter will reduce the items in the results to content tagged with that term.
Advanced Search
To access advanced search, click on ‘Advanced search’ to the right of the main search box.
You can use Boolean operators here, i.e. AND, OR. Enter a term in the search box, then click ‘Add row’ and select ‘AND’, ‘OR’, or ‘NOT’; then enter the second term. For example, entering ‘African’ AND ‘dress’ will return only content related to African dress, whereas entering ‘African’ OR ‘dress’ will return content related to African and content related to dress.
You can also restrict your search to a specific time period of publication by entering dates into ‘Publication dates’ or ‘Online publication dates’.
Browse
“Browse’ is located in the main navigation above ‘Search.” Hover over ‘Browse’ and select one of the nine categories displayed.
This takes you to a page showing further facets within the top level category; for example, the Place page features various geographical locations. In some cases the display cannot accommodate the full list of terms – simply click ‘More’ to reveal these.
Selecting a term on one of these pages will show you all the content that has been indexed under that term. You can select second level terms, e.g. Place > Europe, or third level terms, e.g. Place > Europe > France.
Clicking on a term will take you to a search results page, showing results for that term and showing a filter corresponding to that term.
Related Content
On many content pages, whether images or text-based content, you will see related content at the foot of the page.
This includes content from your current subscription database. The content here depends on the subject matter and how the item has been indexed.
If your subscription database features image content, you will see related images as well as related text-based content.
Image pages feature the index terms for that image under the ‘Explore’ heading on the left-hand side of the image. These are clickable, and will return search results based on that index term (this behaves in the same way as browse, so clicking on the same term in browse gives the same results).
Index terms for text content pieces appear in search results under the bibliographic details. Clicking on one of these terms will launch a new search for all items tagged with that term.
Timeline
To access this feature, hover over ‘Timeline’ in the main navigation and click on the timeline(s) available to you (depending on your subscription).
Click on the date range of interest to you to view images from that period or use the forward and back arrows to navigate through time periods.
Clicking on an image will enlarge it and provide some basic information – click again to go to the dedicated page for that image to find out more and view a larger image. (Note that a few images just exist in the timeline and do not have equivalent image pages, but most do click through to an image page.)
Saving and Folders
Create an individual account via “Sign up” to save content. Once you’ve created an account you will always need to sign in if you wish to access the content in your folders.
The ‘Sign up’ and ‘Personal’ sign in links can be found on the top right of all BFC pages. Once signed in you can view your account information by hovering over the personal icon in the navigation.
You can save each type of text-based content*, e.g. books, reference works, as well as images (if your subscription includes access to images).
To save content, locate the ‘Save’ icon at the top of the page of the content you wish to save.
Clicking on ‘Save’ will enable you to save the URL of the relevant page into a folder. You can create multiple folders if you wish and give them specific names.
Access folders from ‘My Content’ in the main navigation above search.
* Fairchild Books Library: It is not yet possible to save STUDIO content.
** Berg Fashion Library: It is not yet possible to save images from Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion.
*** Bloomsbury Fashion Business Cases: It is not yet possible to save business cases.
Cite
Cite each type of text-based content, e.g. books, reference works, as well as images (if your subscription includes access to images).
To cite content, locate the ‘Cite’ icon at the top of the page of the content you wish to cite.
Clicking on ‘Cite’ will show three formats: MLA, Chicago and APA – simply copy the one which you require and paste this into your document.
* Berg Fashion Library: It is not yet possible to cite images from Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion.
Social Sharing
Share each type of content* (including images where appropriate to your subscription) via various social channels media and email.
To share content, locate the ‘Share’ icon at the top of the page of the content you wish to share. Click ‘share’ and select the method you wish to use to share the content.
* Bloomsbury Fashion Business Cases: It is not yet possible to share business cases.
Fairchild Books Store
Alongside its subscription databases, Bloomsbury Fashion Central contains the Fairchild Books Store. Instructors and students can rent or purchase textbooks, as well as order inspection copies, from the world’s foremost higher education publisher in fashion and interior design.